Yesterday (July 9), Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander became a cover boy -- and a provocative one, at that -- when he graced PAPER magazine in a silken Versace shirt while sensually resting his head on a model’s bare thigh.

In the interview, the singer gets serious, firing shots at the passive homophobia that he still sees lingering around the music industry.

"In many ways, this is the very best time to be a gay artist ever," he says. "We wouldn't be where we are today without all the gay artists that have come before us and broken down so many barriers. But barriers aren't gone. Particularly for less privileged members of the queer community. There is this very insidious casual homophobia that exists in the fabric of everything including the music industry.”

I wanted to explain to my lover what it felt like living brown in a predominantly white gay ghetto. We chose to retire with our own people so we could finally settle into safety and harmony. I never met a more hostile and prejudice group of men and women. I'm only whole again when my lover pulls me back and reminds me what home is...us. 20-May-2018

Hip-hop has always been a culture that thrives off of young, controversial figures, but with the information that’s already available on the aforementioned artists, it’s impossible for listeners to support them in good conscience. In order to properly reckon with our roles in their success, we really need to stop entertaining and listening to them.

I wanted to see boys and girls playing with each other. There are hidden subtexts in which the sexes can desire mutually and never live on the same page. The last dancer is silent because the openness she has shared with men is now declared mute. 14-Mar-2018

According to Cardi, it’s not just the musicians and performers who deal with sexual harassment. Video models, often seen and not heard, are typically silenced when they discuss what they deal with, she said. "A lot of video vixens have spoke about this and nobody gives a fuck," Cardi told Cosmo. "I bet if one of these women stands up and talks about it, people are going to say, 'So what? You’re a ho. It don’t matter.'"

There are two futuristic threads. In the first, he's discovering how his body will interact with a machine for the first time. The second future assigns your body a sex - as society deems it (population control.) The fight is to not only accept the bodies we own but to have people respect the ones we create. 10-Mar-2018

There is a pervasive trope that the rock star male musician is dangerous, brutish, and lionized for his sexuality. (We’ve seen this cliché in rap and pop music, too, like with XXXtentacion or R.Kelly.) We, as consumers of the culture, and marketers who have sold this idea, have allowed stage personas be real life and let it continue because they identify as rock stars. There is little effort to make a distinction between the two. And this is what makes it exceptionally hard to have a productive conversation about consent, boundaries, and accountability.

Growing up in the hood, I levitated to the farthest distance art would allow me to withstand it.

In life, not only do the perpetrators get to represent us but society rewards and exalts them as we afford them bubble towers to hide in. The victims are relegated to dealing with society's racist wrath over what they sowed. 12-Feb-2018